What do you do if one of your staff tests positive for COVID?

As we all know, independent bookstores have been pushed to new limits in 2020, changing policies and sales models—often by the minute—as COVID numbers continue to rise. My own company, Matchbook Marketing, has evolved and changed with booksellers’ ever-shifting needs, working with bookstores throughout the crisis to help them meet the challenges of operating in a largely online environment. We’ve been busy freshening websites to be more shoppable, adding gift items, promoting book carousels, enabling elements like donation buttons, wish lists, gift cards and codes, and adding messaging that changes with COVID policies, including curbside pickups, changing store hours, local deliveries, and more. Most importantly, we have kept our offering of personalized staff training so that booksellers know how to maintain their new site and adapt to the “new normal.”

If one of your staff receives a COVID-positive test result, your already continual pivoting accelerates rapidly. The storefront closes, all staff get tested, new accommodations for order processing need to be enacted. And somehow, in the midst of all this activity, the store also needs to communicate to the public what is happening.
What are some of the things you should do if this happens to your store?

• Create a public message for your website and to share on social media. Create a long and short version of this message to accommodate multiple needs.
• Update your store hours on your website and social media account, and add COVID messaging to the top of your page.
• Create a standard and reassuring response for queries and well-wishers.
• Check your order processing set up. The odds are, your normal operations are going to be interrupted. You may need an alternative option like Bookshop.org to meet processing demands.

Most of all, don’t panic! A calm and consistent approach to your messaging will reassure your customers and your community. In working with stores, Matchbook Marketing has developed a quick-response series of steps for handling a COVID-positive test situation. We coordinate store PR, providing a fast response to queries, and thus allowing you to focus your support where it is most needed, on your staff and your business.

-Gwyn Ridenhour
Founder, Matchbook Marketing
For more information about Matchbook Marketing, please visit www.WeLoveBooksellers.com. You can reach Gwyn at matchbookgwyn@welovebooksellers.com.